listened to the sounds of the palace in night: the almost silent wind
through a distant window, the deep and subtle ticking of cooling stone,
the breath of the woman at his side. Beyond the doors to the apartments,
someone coughed-one of the servants set to watch over the Khai Machi in
case there was anything he should desire in the night. Utah tried not to
move.
He hadn't asked Kiyan about Danat's health. He'd meant to. But surely if
there had been anything concerning, she would have brought it up to him.
And regardless, he could ask her in the morning. Perhaps he would cancel
the audiences before midday and go speak with Danat's physicians. And
speak to Eiah. He hadn't said he would do that, but Kiyan had asked, and
it wasn't as if being present in his own daughter's life should he an
imposition. He wondered what it would have been to have a dozen wives,
whether he would have felt the need to attend to all of their children
as he did to the two he had now, how he would have stood watching his
boys grow tip when he knew he would have to send them away or else watch
them slaughter one another over which of them would take his own place
here on this soft, sleepless bed and fear in turn for his own sons.
The night candle ate through its marks as he listened to the internal
voice nattering in his mind, gnawing at half a thousand worries both
justified and inane. The trade agreements with tJdun weren't in place
yet. Perhaps something really was the matter with Eiah. He didn't know
how long stone buildings stood; nothing stands forever, so it only made
sense that someday the palaces would fall. And the towers. The towers
reached so high it seemed that low clouds would touch them; what would
he do if they fell? But the night was passing and he had to sleep. If he
didn't the morning would be worse. He should talk with Maati, find out
how things had gone between him and the Dai-kvo's envoy. Perhaps a dinner.
And on, and on, and on. When he gave tip, slipping from the bed softly
to let Kiyan, at least, sleep, the night candle was past its
threequarter mark. Utah walked to the apartment's main doors on bare,
chilled feet and found his keeper in the hall outside dozing. He was a
young man, likely the son of some favored servant or slave of Utah's own
father, given the honor of sitting alone in the darkness, bored and
cold. Utah considered the boy's soft face, as peaceful in sleep as a
corpse's, and walked silently past him and into the dim hallways of the
palace.
His night walks had been growing more frequent in recent months.
Sometimes twice in a week, Utah found himself wandering in the darkness,
sleep a stranger to him. He avoided the places where he might encounter
another person, jealously keeping the time to himself. 'lbnight, he took
a lantern and walked down the long stairways to the ground, and then on
down, to the tunnels and underground streets into which the city
retreated in the deep, hone-breaking cold of winter. With spring come,
Utah found the palace beneath the palace empty and silent. The smell of
old torches, long gone dark, still lingered in the air, and Utah
imagined the corridors and galleries of the city descending forever into
the earth. Dark archways and domed sleeping chambers cut from stone that
had never seen daylight, narrow stairways leading endlessly down like a